Driving News

Shopping for a new car with life-saving active safety tech can be a challenge, and not just because of rapidly evolving technology. Compounding the confusion is that there is no widely accepted name for technologies such as automatic emergency braking and blind-spot monitors.

AAA said last week proposed standardized names for every safety technology currently offered today. In a study, AAA looked at 34 car brands and found that their advanced driver assistance systems vary greatly and in some cases could overpromise features for customers. For example, AAA said that systems such as Tesla’s Autopilot and Nissan’s ProPilot Assist suggest a much higher degree of autonomous driving than the systems are able to deliver. AAA found 40 percent of Americans expect systems with such names to offer fully self-driving capability.

In reality, the technologies can help keep a car centered in its lane and a set distance from the car in front, but they require constant driver attention.